some serve protesting in person on the front lines - some serve in the back , making caltrops , and premixing baking soda (three teaspoons of powder for every 8.5 ounces of liquid ) into spray bottles
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Either the accusation of ‘treason’ is exaggerated or the “life at hard labor” is inappropriate, pick one.
The US constitution actually defines ‘treason’ precisely, and also specifies death as the penalty.
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Yeah, Nice was pretty much the primal example.
Melbourne CBD is chock full of chunks of concrete now: https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/melbourne-cbd-security-southern-cross-station-gets-antiterror-concrete-bollards/news-story/8be7370be759aec64f343d194540dcd4
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Time to develop a cheap easy way to make caltrops.
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It seems whoever is running 2020 has decided we need a dash of Carmageddon on top of everything else. This is monstrous.
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The next logical step in this escalating ‘war’ is for organised protesters to equip themselves with stingers/spike stripes to substantially reduce this risk.
In the UK these guys seem to be among the ‘go to’ guys.
As others have also said…
Indeed, but perhaps not as easy as you might imagine. Nails will often lie down when a tyre hits them unless embedded in something very rigid.
Or those, yeah.
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Nasty on the feet. Don’t recommend for protests, but perhaps around cop cars…
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(and @G_r_ld_z_n_r @anon36155390)
The trouble with catrops is someone has to clear them up afterwards. I think spike strips or stingers are better as they allow an organised protest to position defences and then remove them afterwards. Plus they can be made very visible to drivers and help avoid the sort of incident posted about. Caltrops are not necessarily visible (though pink helps) and mean protestors may still get driven at, but the vehicle may be disabled afterwards. Prevention - AND after-cure - are better.
ETA that the Magnum guys also make a caltrop-similar spike specifically for placing under parked cars. “Don’t attempt to move off sir, your tyre will immediately deflate if you do”
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That’s only half right. “The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.”
I understand the use of the caltrops, but I’m not sure about the baking soda mixture. Is it a way to get a permanent mark on the painted surface of a car?
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Neutralizes tear gas, if I’m not mistaken.
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It seems like different times have different characteristic crimes,
I think that this is mirror neurons at work. It only gets worse from here.
Following some of the highway closing protests around 2014 there were a few crowd rammings and the general meme entered right wing discourse, usually in a tough guy “I would just drive through” manner. After Charlottesville it moved from a meme used primarily as a reaction to an active threat made to a lot of protests. The far right actively pushes this as a tactic and has for the past few years. It is one of their favorites.
We had the caltrop debate after a car ran into a protest locally (none dead, one injured not critically). There are a few problems with all of the spike strip and caltrop suggestions. 1) Most of these attacks have targeted a somewhat mobile crowd. You can’t use a fixed perimeter defense in a march. 2) A high speed intentional ramming will still have enough momentum to carry them into the crowd no matter how quickly the tires deflate. 3) There is the risk of someone stepping on them. 4) If you successfully stop an attack it is likely to result in charges against the person who used the spikes rather than the attacker, for destruction of property or some kind of inflated attempted murder charge if the prosecutor feels feisty. Spikes represent a huge risk for really minimal hope of protection.
I haven’t seen the discussion make the rounds yet, but these attacks do tremendous damage to movements, in addition to the damage to bodies. After our incident myself and a good number of other people are still dealing with major trauma fallout. There is amplified by the fact that, in a lot of cases, the cops let the driver go. I still remember screaming at the cop standing by to stop the car or at least call an ambulance. I’m aware of about a half dozen people who were previously pretty active who stopped all organizing work or street actions after being there that night. Pretty much anyone within sight or sound of the attack, and a non-trivially number of people who just saw the video, will deal with lasting effects and a bunch will probably stop organizing.
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I’m all for fighting back, but a vehicle with flat tires is still quite a formidable weapon against a crowd. I’m also thinking I’d much rather be run over by a tire with air in it, and on a vehicle with as much ground clearance as possible, if I had to choose. Most importantly IMO, a vehicle’s front bumper height is engineered to be optimal for survivability in pedestrian-car interactions. Make it a few inches lower with flat tires and it likely becomes more dangerous than the factory setup. Instead of kicking your legs out and directing your body over or around the car, it could serve to plant your feet to the ground and force you under tor vehicle. That last part is just speculation, could be the opposite for all I know.
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Some interesting points, but given the range of vehicle (and bumper) heights - especially in the US where many ‘SUV’ type vehicles are pretty much ‘trucks’, I doubt this point. I see a stinger as much as a discouragement as an actual defence. Also, stingers may best be deployed a suitable distance from the main protest to allow slowing to take place (yeah -would need ‘outrider’ protesters to defend those - logistically challenging), and even if not, and a car drives through, it is going to make a lot more noise and alert people, and will stop a lot sooner and hit fewer people, AND will have the key benefit of ensuring the perpetrator is likely to be detained at the scene of the crime and not drive away.
But it may indeed be six and two threes. It was just a suggestion.
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My assertion about stock vehicle bumper-heights being designed for pedestrian survivability is definitely factual. There are no pedestrian-specific US regulations that I could find, but many other foreign markets do have them, and it has definitely been a design consideration for at least two decades as far as I could tell from a quick scan of publicly available engineering papers on the subject. The general goal is to keep you from going under the car while minimizing the chances of a severe head injury from striking the hood or windshield too hard, so it’s a bit of a tightrope they have to walk,
After giving the main subject of how to defend ourselves a little more thought, I think a much better solution would be a simple short length of climbing rope or light-duty cable with a metal hook on each end. Loop it over a tire and clip it to the frame or suspension linkage. Car can’t move more than a couple of yards before the axle gets wrapped and it’s immobilized.
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Oh, I know there are EU regulations about pedestrian impact survivability, and bumper height must play a role (as does bumper design), but I think the height of some vehicles makes it a moot point, especially given human height variability. No idea if US has similar regs. I bet the EU regs are designed with some average or limited range of pedestrian height in mind. (Cue someone to tell me I’m wrong, in 3…2…1…)
Not sure the wrapping cable round a tyre/axle is too practical in the moment of panic when a rogue driver aims their several-ton killing machine at an unsuspecting crowd at speed. Maybe surrounding a protest (or a march) with such a cable held by those on the outer edges, enclosing everyone else, might work, even if only as a deterrent.
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I realized after I posted that I made it unnecessarily complicated with the hook. Just a loop of rope or cable thrown over the top of a wheel would do the trick, and could be thrown at a moving vehicle with admittedly limited success. Now if everyone in the protest had one or two of these looped over their shoulders, OTOH, it could save some lives if this kind of vehicle terrorism becomes common.
I think the entire point of this post is that it has. It’s happening all over the country at protests.
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